This blog is the fourth, and last, in a series of four in regards to how Progressus can help your professional services firm by injecting flexibility and speed. Professional Services firms need to be flexible in order to adapt to the ever-changing market and technology. In the first and second blogs, we discussed the six disruptive trends in the professional services industry. In the third blog, we discussed some signs that might tell you that your firm is at risk. In this last blog, we are going to give some suggestions as to how firms can make some adjustments to decrease their risk and more customer-centric.
Once you’ve determined whether your firm is at risk or not, you need to decide on a plan of action. What can you do to quickly adapt your firm? It’s not easy to make a quick change, especially in professional services firms. However, you know that a change needs to be made and your business needs to become more customer-centric. We have some suggestions on how you can do that…
Optimize core processes. Companies can’t change their infrastructure to meet the whims of the marketplace. What they can do, however, is streamline, simplify and integrate the processes that support their true engine of growth. We found that the firms with a higher degree of process and technological standardization are more agile… Agile companies focus their time on standardizing the processes that won’t change, freeing up resources to develop value-added features that do respond to changing customer needs. By minimizing excess spending and non-core programs, companies can better direct limited resources to satisfying customer expectations, activities that position a company well not only during times of recession but also for long periods of growth.
Minimize information silos. Barriers to change include conflicting departmental goals and priorities, a culture of risk aversion and silo-based information. By reducing silos, business leaders can improve collaboration inside and outside their enterprise and better align departmental goals and performance measures with overall strategy.
Integrate and automate to build collaborative knowledge-sharing processes. Because technology underpins nearly every business process today, it can help professional services firms improve their use of critical data. Knowledge management and collaboration systems can play a key role in enabling organizational agility and innovation. Such integration also enables IT to advance an organization’s ability to problem-solve, improve decision-making and convert information into insight.
Turn data into knowledge. Professional services firms that use technology to better manage their own business and provide value to their clients. In addition to ERP and CRM applications that enable optimization of core processes and serve as a foundation for data integration; predictive analytics and performance dashboards can help firms make faster, more informed decisions in response to market changes.
These four steps should help your professional services firm make adjustments to become more customer-centric in this ever-changing market. Remember, nothing can be solved in a day, but little steps each day can make a big difference. Additionally, the right business technology solution like Progressus can help your firm be nimble and thrive in this market. Contact info@progressussoftware.com to find out more information about Progressus.
Download our Flexibility and Speed for Professional Services Firms white paper to learn more about the disruptors of this industry, the warning signs that your firm may be at risk and much more!
